Over the past weekend, four empty Libyan jetliners were set aflame during an insurgent assault against Tripoli’s international airport. Then a week ago, Kabul’s international airport came under attack from insurgents using assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Afghan security forces repelled that attack, but in an earlier raid on the facility Taliban fighters destroyed the helicopter used by Afghanistan’s president.

The world has been hearing about Israel’s tech prowess for well over a decade, but only a few really understood what gizmos from this start-up rich country actually did or had first-hand experience using them.

But now, with Google’s expected $1 billion plus acquisition of Israeli traffic navigation start-up Waze, venture capitalists and technology experts are hailing it as seminal endorsement by Silicon Valley of a new species of Israeli start-ups that have mass appeal.

With tens of millions users downloading its mobile application in five years, Waze is the leading edge of a shift among Israeli technology companies to focus on Internet and media software catering to every day consumers – a target market that was once considered beyond the reach of Israel’s tech community.

On Tuesday night comedian Stephen Colbert warned, in his inimitable style, that Americans faced the threat of what he dubbed “spreadable Sharia” — the invasion of a Middle Eastern staple into the U.S. diet.

The skit, based on a day of chatter surrounding the WSJ’s story on the remarkable rise of hummus, did hint an interesting point. While Mr. Colbert may have joked that the dip made from the “Legume of Doom” is stealing local jobs “once held by onion dip and your finger,” the way hummus hit the U.S. market is 100% American phenomenon.

That’s because the hummus that is taking over the U.S.A. is slickly marketed, available in dozens of flavors and formats, and sold everywhere from corner stores to Wal-Mart. It’s a long stretch from hummus in its most elemental form: cooked beans, mashed and seasoned. It might take a region as old and wondrous as the Mediterranean to perfect hummus, but it takes America to make a mini-tub of roasted red pepper hummus with pretzels available for $2.29 at the local 7-11.